If you can't live in Key West, reading June Keith is the next best thing. Now, this popular writer, described by one critic as being "as deeply embedded in Key West culture as an outsider ever can be", is writing about surviving life-threatening illness as an artist, a mother and a wife, in a tiny society at the end of the American road that she still calls Paradise.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Scenes from a Long Good Friday

Don't mess with my cushions!

One Thursday morning our neighbor Thea woke up blind. She was understandably freaked out, but maintained her calm as Michael drove her to the local eye doctor, where she was examined. The doctor came into the waiting room, stood before Michael and gravely announced: “She needs to go to the emergency room at the eye clinic in Miami. Right now.”
Michael called me at work to say that he was heading to Miami with Thea. What else could he do? Whoa! On a busy holiday weekend? There had to be a better way! I made a dozen phone calls, to the hospital, to the ambulance company, to the helicopter people. Turns out that waking up blind, as terrible as that is, does not classify as a life-threatening condition. Therefore, the only way to get Thea to Miami was to drive, on the eve of Good Friday. I joined them, and around 2 we headed to Miami. We arrived in the city, and into the maze that is Miami’s hospital district, just after rush hour, and found our way to the clinic by nightfall.
In the waiting room there were others with eye emergencies even worse than Thea’s. A kid on a stretcher with one eye heavily bandaged. (A victim of the famous BB gun incident our parents warned us about?) A baby, wailing, in the arms of his horrified parents. And other, quieter catastrophies. Like Thea’s -- all of them waiting for their turn with the doctor.
By midnight Thea had been examined, her blood tested and her body injected with steroids. She was told to return in the morning, bright and early. Which meant checking into a hotel located somewhere in the maze of dirty streets and tall buildings.
After another day of waiting rooms and treatments, Thea was released from the clinic. The roads were a glut of 3-day-weekend traffic. The source of Thea’s sudden blindness remained a mystery, although a course of treatment had been prescribed. As we made our way out of Miami, the tension, disappointment, and Thea’s fear traveled with us, like an elephant in the back seat. There was little to say, and so we said little. Our relief, at arriving home, was profound.
Sometimes life in Key West is more like a movie than real life, as in you can’t make this stuff up! It was one of those times. And we had one more scene to go.
As Michael eased the car into our narrow driveway we noticed an unfamiliar bicycle propped against our house. Unlocked. Who does that? While I walked Thea home, Michael investigated. He quickly returned to the front door and said, “Call the cops!” The tone of his voice sent chills up my spine.
“Why?” I asked, dialing 911.
“There’s a body on the deck,” he said.
“A body? You mean a dead body?”
“It’s all wrapped up,” he said. “I can’t tell.”
He encouraged me to not look, so I didn’t. A policeman soon arrived. He was all business. With his right hand resting on his gun, he walked through the house with Michael leading the way. He saw the mummy on the deck and agreed that the thing wrapped in a quilt beneath the schefflera tree might be dead. Or alive.
“Hey,” he said, poking the body with his foot. “Hey, you!”
He did this for a minute or two until finally, the thing moved. It was alive. It was a man and the man wanted to be left alone. That’s what he said.
“Leave me alone, please,” he moaned, and as he exhaled this plea fumes of alcohol filled the air. Michael and I staggered back, but not the cop.
“You gotta get out of here,” the cop told the man. “This is private property. You’re trespassing.”

Our friends from Up North always get a kick out of our outdoor laundry room.

I realized that he was wrapped in the heavy quilt we use to cover our washing machine. Beneath his head, I recognized the porch chair cushions. He’d opened the gate, come into our yard, onto the deck, and bundled himself up nice and cozy. He hadn’t been there for long, I knew. Otherwise, that bike would have been gone, like all unlocked bikes in Key West.
“Man, I told you to fix that gate lock,” I hissed at Michael, as the man slowly rose from the floor, moaning gruffly, polluting the air with his barroom breath.
“Can I take this shit with me?” the man asked, clutching the quilt to his chest.
“Yes,” the cop said. “Take it and go.”
By now we were totally punch drunk with exhaustion. The situation was suddenly hilarious.
“Wait a minute,” Michael said. “That’s my shit!”
What made it all the more hilarious to me is Michael swearing. Michael does not swear.
“No, you can’t take it. That’s Mr. Keith’s shit!”
And then the cop. More hilarious still.
“How about these pillows?” he asked.
“No!” I yelled.
The drunken man surrendered our stuff. The cop walked him around to the front of the house where he slumped on the steps, and wearily held his head in his hands. He was not a bad man, I thought, just a defeated one. The bike, he said, in response to the cop's questioning, was his. He’d been in Key West for four weeks.
“You want me to run him in?” the policeman asked. “It’s up to you.”
“No, we just want him out of here,” I said, talking as tough as I could muster. “But he’d better not come back here because this is Florida and if I see somebody on my property, behind my gate, I have the right to shoot!”
“Did you hear that?” the cop said to the man. “Mrs. Keith says if you come back here again she’ll blow your head off.”
With that the man rose from the step, and slowly climbed onto his bike, moving as if the effort pained him greatly.
“Hey, he’s riding drunk!” I said, as the man headed toward Duval Street and who knew what next.
“Yeah,” the cop said. “I’ll probably be seeing him again tonight.”
“Just like a western," Michael said. "This is where the cowboy rides into the setting sun.”
Then we three stood silently, watching, and waiting for the credits to roll.

We are visiting Islamorada right now. Just left Key West after a fun week there. We will be headed back to the cold North in another two weeks. I love reading your books. I have your Key west 4th edition sitting right next to me now as I write this. Please write a continuation of your first book. Of your experiences in Key West. We stayed at the Artist house BTW. Did not realize the creepy stories around it until after we left and read up on it. Only in Key West!

About Me

June Keith has been living in and writing about Key West for over 30 years. Her columns have appeared in the Miami Herald and the Key West Citizen. She was a founding editor of Key West Magazine. Her books, including a best-selling guidebook and two collections of her columns, are available at bookstores everywhere and online at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. In Key West autographed copies are featured in the gift shop at Blue Heaven.